Three letter words
by musikfreakmeg
Summary: '"Sad" is a stupid, small word that tries to be more than it is. Three letters? Seriously? What idiot came up with that? Three letters trying to encompass anything stretching from grief to pain to utter, heartbroken devastation.' Max's thoughts after Fang leaves. It's strange how some words can seem so insignificant, whilst others can mean so much. I don't own Maximum Ride.


**A/N I'm taking the night off from writing After Angel, since I really wasn't in the right mindframe to do the last chapter of that - I want that chapter to be hopeful and stuff, and right now I'm feeling a bit strange. So I wrote this strange one-shot about Max after Fang left. **

I don't think I feel sad anymore.

'Sad'.

It's a stupid word. A stupid, small word that tries to be more than it is. I mean, three letters? Seriously? Three letters trying to encompass anything stretching from grief to pain to utter, heartbroken devastation.

What idiot came up with that?

So maybe I don't feel sad anymore because I never really felt sad to begin with. I felt lost, I felt sick from hurting so much, I felt as though my world had just ceased to function in any way that I could begin to understand…

'Sad' was too much of a horrific understatement to even consider using it to describe the way I was feeling.

But now I feel kind of numb, like I'm hovering somewhere between 'apathetic' and 'melancholy'. Now _those_ are good words. I'll put my hands up and admit that I'm really not the first person anyone would usually come to if they wanted an in-depth analysis of the English language, but when you're feeling something and then the right words come along to explain that feeling, you _know_. You _know_ they're the right words because they just _sound_ right. Is it too corny to say that words sound like emotions? Yeah, probably.

I don't know why I'm suddenly feeling like this. It might be the tiredness. Causing the numbness, that is. It might be the exhaustion that comes with constantly having to put on a strong front that's dulling the pain. That's one theory; I've got a few of them. It might be the tiredness or it might be the shock of losing him, acting as an anaesthetic against the agony that that very situation caused in the first place, like an injected painkiller calming the sting of the device that administered it.

Nothing really seems like it matters now. Of course, I can still recognise the things that are important, can still look at something and logically deduce whether or not it needs attention, but I just can't bring myself to care so much about it anymore. Usually when you see something as being significant, you form a kind of emotional attachment to it which drives you forwards to get the job done, give it the consideration it demands, etcetera. Right now that sounds like something that requires more energy than I've got.

There's another theory – to feel something takes energy. Think about how tiring being angry or ecstatic or afraid can be. Even if it's a positive emotion, feeling anything strongly enough will drain you, at least for a little while. And I've been feeling way too much recently. I'm sure that the sentiments are still lurking inside me somewhere, underlying my words and my thoughts and my dreams, but I used up every ounce of strength I possessed feeling more than I could have thought possible in the first few weeks after he left. Now my bank is dry, my eyes are dry, everything about me is dry, dry, dry.

That's another word with three letters, just like 'sad'. But being a small word suits 'dry' just fine. It's meant to be small, it's meant to be insignificant and dull and lifeless. If you look at it for long enough it kind of stops looking like a word and just turns into a sensation of strange discomfort and monotony, the feeling of sun-scorched sand rubbing against parched skin. Kind of rough and gritty and too smooth all at the same time. Just hearing the word enough times makes you feel dehydrated, like the moisture's being sapped from your mouth.

It's really quite pathetic, what I've become. I'm just floating along now, barely in contact with the rest of the world. Have you ever had that feeling when it's like you're functioning just a split-second behind everyone and everything else? You're out of synch, but not enough to cut you off completely; you're close enough to see it all, to realise what you're missing, but you're always that half-step behind, so nothing quite makes it right through to you and sparks a connection. There's a gap there that you can't bridge, and whenever you try you end up with something jerky and watered-down, just a thin, weak imitation of how things really are.

Is this really all I am now? Did I give too much away, reduce myself to this? Did he take all of me with him when he left? Because that's what it feels like; I'm like a freaking ghost, a shell that's been stripped of its contents. All gone.

Even though 'all' isn't a big word to look at, when you say it out loud it ends up sounding big. Which is as it should be, really. It's made up of those kinds of sounds, the ones that can be stretched and drawn out and pulled like taffy, so that soon enough it becomes as vast as whatever it's being used in reference to. It glides out of your mouth and seems like it could go on forever, just spreading further and further out, going on and on until it surrounds you completely, reverberating like a single, forever-echoing musical note.

I gave him my all, dredging up every last piece of me to lay out in front of him, completely vulnerable and exposed.

Which brings us to my last idea as to why my emotions are drifting off somewhere where I can't quite reach them: when I let myself feel, when I let myself open up to the things inside me instead of dampening them down until I don't have to acknowledge them anymore, suddenly _everything_ is like a huge, blaring alarm that rings in my ears and tells me over and over that he's gone. He was – is – a part of me, so deeply rooted into my very core that to feel anything is to remember him, because how could that not be the case when I gave him so much of me, allowed myself to feel so much for him? Pain and anger and confusion are all constant reminders of how he left, how he _made_ me experience all those emotions by deciding that he couldn't or shouldn't be in my life anymore.

When I'm not numb, I think too much, remember too much.

When I'm not numb, I think of him.

Him.

Him.

And suddenly three letters doesn't seem quite so small after all.

**A/N ****My head's all fuzzy, so I'm not actually sure whether this makes sense the way I think it does, or if it's just come out as bizarre nonsensical ramblings. You're gonna have to let me know - review! All you have to do is write in that box down there. \/**


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